Perfect borders made easy

My kids love lemonade stands. They are a fun summer activity for the little ones, but they are also very cute at summer parties.

A self-serve lemonade stand at summer gatherings (or one staffed by a cute little guy in a yellow bow tie like mine) is not only functional but festive. I don’t have the room to store a cute stand, so I decided to design a system to attach a removable faux awning to a table we own that would stow away easily and compactly.

Before I explain this simple system, let’s begin by creating the simple awning. Each pennant began as a 3” x 12” rectangle of (alternating) colored cardstock. Fold in half and round the bottom two corners with a corner punch. Sandwich two pieces of string between all folds and glue closed. Be sure the string is free at the top of the fold so the pennants can be slid later for easy placement. Add lettering if desired.

I imagined I would just strap some 1 x 2 poles or dowels to the legs of the kids’ play table from inside to support the awning. However, when I actually went to do this, I realized the table top extended out further than the legs. An easy solution was to sandwich another piece of wood, cut to size, between the leg and poles to fill in the gap.

I added two zip ties to each side for stability. You could likely use other bindings, such as ribbon or chenille stems. Be sure the binding won’t damage any delicate finishes.

I spray painted my poles yellow, mostly because I am addicted to spray painting anything I can get my hands on. Especially in yellow. Or turquoise. Or white. This isn’t necessary of course. Screw in a threaded eyelet at the top of each pole.

Tie each end of the awning banner to the eyelets tautly. When you are done, untie and fold away for future use.

I leaned a chalkboard in front of the table to add a hand-written menu. Since my table legs were unusually wide, I figured I would come up with some decorations to hide the zip ties. I doubt my love of accordion circles will ever fade. Here I designed lemon slice circles, which I scattered around with rolled up masking tape on the back, but I left one zip tie showing for reference.

To get eight segments, I cut two strips of 1.5” x 6.75” yellow cardstock and used the scoring blade in my rotary trimmer to score every .75 inch. Accordion-fold and adhere in one long strip, and then adhere the ends together to form a continuous circle. Flatten at center and hot glue to a 4” paper doily layered onto a 4.25” circle of yellow cardstock easily cut with the circle cutter.

Now that the stand is constructed, the most important element to add is the lemonade! I decided to add a festive touch to the straws by creating little cardstock lemons.

To create texture, I embossed yellow cardstock using a texture plate. Next punch an XL circle squeeze punch once, then feed circle back into punch partially and punch again. Punch a hole at the center to thread onto straw. If straws are too thin , cut an X using a craft knife at the center to thread.

Sticking with stamps, using a lemon stamp is cute enough on its own to decorate lemon cupcakes glued to toothpicks.

All of the tags were tied to mason jars using twine fed through a 1/8 inch hole punch.

Since the stand and consumables were all decorated, I figured I should craft up a little cuteness for the lemonade stand “staff”. I decided on a bright yellow bow tie but then remembered my sewing machine is currently broken.

I ended up designing a super quick felt bow tie. This is the kind of bow tie you throw on for fun and cuteness factor, not for a formal event.

Simply cut a 1.5” x 8.5” strip of yellow felt using a rotary cutter and acrylic ruler on a cutting mat. Overlap ends centered at back and hand stitch as shown. Cinch and tie off at the back. Wrap a 5/8” wide strip of felt around center and sew closed at back. Insert a bobby pin into center ring to attach to shirt. Alternatively you can sew another strip to feed through long enough to wrap around the child’s neck and secure with Velcro dots.

I thought marketing would be a good lesson to tie into the fun of lemonade stand, so my son and I crafted up door hangers to place around his friends’ doorknobs in the neighborhood.

To create a custom lemon stamp, trace a circle from the Circles-1 shape template onto the back of self-adhesive foam. Cut out using Fiskars’ new non-stick kids scissors. Cut the circle in half, then in half again, and once more. You now have eight pie pieces. Peel off self-adhesive backing and assemble onto a recycled lid for stamping.

The Everywhere Punch Window System makes easy work of adding a circle opening for a door hanger. Just cut a slit from the circle to edge to feed onto doorknobs.

Lemonade stands have long been a quintessential part of summer. They are refreshing, festive, and most importantly – fun!